View Single Post
Old 05-17-23, 11:56 AM
  #10  
79pmooney
Senior Member
 
79pmooney's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2014
Location: Portland, OR
Posts: 13,336

Bikes: (2) ti TiCycles, 2007 w/ triple and 2011 fixed, 1979 Peter Mooney, ~1983 Trek 420 now fixed and ~1973 Raleigh Carlton Competition gravel grinder

Liked 4,338 Times in 2,792 Posts
bikenh, look at your pedals and cranks. You may want different. Pedal have different depths below the pedal spindle. Some of the double sided MTB pedals are quite deep. Some of the one sided high performance road pedals barely project down below the spindle in an effort to be as aerodynamic as possible.

Also, look at how wide the pedal is along the bottom. Pedals that are, looking from behind, deep and square will hit on a turn very early. Pedals where they remove all the material at the outbourd bottom "corner" will have far more clearance pedaling through turns.

Crank length. Straight forward. Longer, more strikes.

In turns, crank width also matters. The "Q-factor". How far outboard the pedals sit from the center plane of the bike. (Now, the Q-factor doesn't tell you all because it is simply the width between the cranks where the pedals meet and doesn't take into account any asymmetry. Nevertheless, high Q cranks are pedal scrapers and low Qs considerably better.

Finally, look at the BB height. Pull out a tape measure and measure from the floor up to the center of the BB spindle. (Using BB height means the tire diameter has been accounted for.) I think in English here. !2" is very high. 11" on the road is about the max you will ever see. 10 5/8" to 10 3/4" is popular road race. 10 3/8" is about as low as you are going to see on a road bike.

All this stuff matters. Some - you have the frame and it's pretty hard to change. Cranks aren't hard to change but there are lots of things to consider. Pedals - there are a vast number of types and shapes.

And last - some real world examples from a guy who loves to pedal around corners, When I raced, I was slow. Being able to pedal deeper into a corner and sooner out of it was a saver of precious muscle. And I fell in love with fix gears my first season, 47 years ago and have been pedaling those things around the corners of 100,000 miles. So:

All these bikes have 175mm cranks. (My knees don't like change.)

My former race bike - 11" BB with narrow (1970s) cranks. Traditional racing rattrap pedals, fairly "square" but not all that wide. I could pedal that bike very deep into corners and hit pedals only twice despite being rather fearless.

My two Peugeots converted to fix gears. BB height around 10 3/8: Leotard "Berthet" platforms. Narrow and clean underneath. I called both of those bikes "slinkies". I hit the pedals on a regular basis and so early in turns that the strike wasn't scary. (On my fully laid over race bike, it was!) Every left pedal got it's left dustcap unscrewed with hits. (Right side screwed on tighter.)

My Raleigh Competition with the Peugeots' BB height using 35c tires. Triple crankset. Decent QA-factor. (My knees don't like wide.) Shimano double sided MTP SPD pedals; fairly narrow but deep. Pedals strike on everything. Early on turns, any speed bump.)

My current "good" bikes. 10 3/4" BBs. (10 7/8" on the fix gear.) Narrow old school racing cranksets. Shimano semi-platform and LOOK Delta-style pedals. (Both 1980s race narrow, shallow and with no "corners".) Gottat lay those bikes over pretty good to hit. Almost never hit on a speed bump, even the nastiest. For me, the sweet spot.+

I know, a lot of info here but maybe it will give you a little direction. (And notice - I did not say "coast through all your turns".)

Ben - who loves to keep those pedals spinning!
79pmooney is offline  
Likes For 79pmooney: